Szalavitz's latest book is Born for Love: Why Empathy Is Essential — and Endangered. It is co-written with Dr. Bruce Perry, a leading expert in the neuroscience of child trauma and recovery.

Maia Szalavitz

Maia Szalavitz is a neuroscience journalist obsessed with addiction, love, evidence-based living, empathy and pretty much everything related to brain and behavior. She is the co-author of Born for Love: Why Empathy is Essential — and Endangered (Morrow, 2010) and The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog (Basic, 2006), both with Dr. Bruce D. Perry. Her 2006 book, Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids (Riverhead, 2006) is the first book-length exposé of the “tough love” business. Szalavitz has been published in TIME Magazine, the New York Times, Elle, Scientific American Mind, the Washington Post, New Scientist and Psychology Today, among many others. She has been awarded the American Psychological Associations Division 50 Award for Contributions to the Addictions and the Media Award from the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology.

It’s not just dementia and cognitive decline that makes people more uncertain with age; changes in rationality and the way the elderly evaluate risk could explain why they are more likely to make the wrong decisions affecting …

One detail among the many reports emerging about Aaron Alexis, the 34-year-old man suspected of killing 12 people in a shooting at the Washington Navy Yard on Monday, stood out: he was a regular meditator.

Health classes don’t have to focus on just eating right and exercising more, according to the latest study. In fact, they might be more effective if they addressed teens’ mental as well as physical needs.